I’m interested in the way humans create meaning between themselves and the spaces they occupy. Place attachment is an important aspect of human identity, contributing to a sense of self and belonging. On the other hand, place attachment is an important social phenomenon that impacts environmentalism, regional culture, and community development. In an effort to explore these ideas, I developed an algorithm for studying old and new sites in the city that I now consider my home, in a way that intentionally exposes the individual experience of developing a relationship with a place. Each visit consisted of one hour of time spent in a place without major distractions such as socializing, reading, or using technology. To provide a baseline, I visited five places that I was already familiar with, and five places that I had never been to before. With these experiences in mind, I chose one new place to visit repeatedly over the course of few months. Through a series of layered wood cuts, my final work of art aims to record the cognitive, physical, and emotional aspects of attachment that develop over time as one builds a relationship with a place. In her paper, “What is sense of place?”, Colorado State sociologist Jennifer E. Cross provided a jumping off point for my research. In it, she states “The strongest and most enduring relationships described by the men and women I interviewed are attachments based on personal history with a place.” My research project combines scholarship and field work to expand the knowledge and application of place attachment and aims to contribute to this conversation in a way that encourages self-reflection and inspires further exploration.

The Digital Future Lab is creating a 3D strategy game called “SEED”. It is a reverse tower defense game in the sense that rather than set up obstacles (towers) on a playing field to stop or destroy waves of enemies from reaching their destination, you set up towers, in this case helpful characters called Muses, to help waves of creatures called Tali along their hazardous journey across the playing field. My responsibilities for SEED were making assets and creating concept art to help in the 3D pipeline. Using Adobe Photoshop, I painted concept art that refines the 2D designs of other students to prepare them for modeling and texturing in a 3D space. It is difficult to imagine certain design or visual ideas without a visual representation and so I created diagrams and sketches to aid my team members. In order for a character to work in a 3D space, certain aspects of its design needed to be altered in order for it to be easily animated, as well as for it to look good in the game itself. In addition to designing these characters, I modeled them using Autodesk Maya and textured them using Substance Painter. As of now, these characters have been fully modeled and are in the game. Apart from that, I also determined the look and feel of the environment of the game and created concept art in order to unify the visual experience between all these different, complex elements. Ideally, all this work will go towards immersing and wowing a player when they first load into the game.

Color is often a very intentional and comprehensive choice as a visual element; artists, filmmakers, designers, and animators recognize color as a tool that signficantly shifts a viewer's perception of their work. While there are universal associations of solid colors- blue for sadness, and red for love, for example, the vastness and complexity of the color wheel leaves much room for nuance between the relationship of humans and color. Color in animation makes use of this nuance, but with a more varied stylistic choice and a greater control over very specific palettes. Through the conceptualization and production of a series of short animation clips, I aim to use color as a deliberate element to evoke subtle shifts in mood, as well as further explore the relationship between animation and color psychology. I've taken inspiration from color scripting in films through the use of a specific color palette to achieve visual balance and strong story support. My work, through tradittional and digital animation methods, aims to bring color in harmony with motion and composition to create a unique visual experience. I hope for my project to contribute to the growing understanding of color as an artistic, technical, and psychological asset in the viewer's engagement in animated films.

This project, spearheaded by Dr. Tony Lucero, showcases the work of Dr. Clyde Snow, a renown forensic anthropologist, and Dr. Mary-Claire King, a geneticist and UW-faculty member, in the field of forensic anthropology in advancing human rights in Latin America. Our project was started by Dr. Lucero to show how various parts of the university can come together to do good for the world. This project focuses on Dr. Snow and Dr. King’s work on advancing cases of disappeared persons in Argentina and impacting trials in Guatemala, ultimately showing the world the importance of forensics in attaining justice and accountability. By conducting in-depth research and illuminating key stories of the pursuit for justice, we will answer the question of how Dr. Snow and Dr. King have revolutionized the fields of forensic anthropology and human rights. To highlight the importance of their work, we will study newspaper articles and court cases. Analyzing the news is crucial to piecing together the multi-faceted nature of their work and examining court cases is necessary to identify exactly how forensic evidence was used to hold human rights abusers accountable. By analyzing media and presenting it in an accessible form, we hope to increase the public's knowledge of forensics through extensive research of the value of the field in finding justice and closure for families of the forcibly disappeared. The output will be a culmination of independent studies conducted by members of the project team and will be presented as digital media components on a central website that is accessible to everyone. Creating digital media that showcases this information will allow us to organize it in a way that engages the public and visually explains the importance of the fields of forensic anthropology and genetics in attaining justice in Latin America and ultimately around the world.